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Art
prices feel the squeeze

By Michael Coulson.
. SA Art Times. While
activity in the art market has picked up, the latest Citadel Art Price
Index suggests that average auction prices this year have followed the
hesitant trend of financial, and especially commodity, markets generally.
After a strong finish to 2012, which saw the index gaining 12.2% last
year, the index fell back by 5.3% in the first quarter of this year. It
is still well below its 2008 peak and technical analysts would say that,
if it is not still in a bear trend, it is at best moving sideways.

Citadel says that
the top end of the market has cooled down as the "astronomic"
records set by Irma Stern are no longer being achieved, while the middle
section of the market is still vibrant, with various artists setting new
records. The heavy weighting attached to the Sterns of course drags the
overall average down in spite of this. However, the index has still risen
about 3.5-fold since 2001 and has outperformed all other main local investment
vehicles except the Johannesburg Stock Exchange -- and that gap will have
narrowed with the recent correction in share prices. Citadel says that
in the final quarter of last year the seven auction houses it monitors
sold 992 works of art for R101m, the same as the previous quarter. I'm
not sure how it arrives at these figures: by my count, just the three
major firms I follow (Strauss and Stephan Welz & Co in SA, Bonhams
in London) had gross sales of R121m in Q4 2012, while there was only one
small sale, grossing less than R10m, in the traditionally quiet Q3, for
much of which the world -- especially western Europe -- is on holiday.
In Q1 2013 each major house had one sale, and they grossed about R110m.
The comparable figure last year was about R75m, while Q4 2011 brought
in just under R130m. So if we take the six months to March, a gross of
about R231m this year compares to about R205m for the comparable period
in 2012. That's double-digit growth, which is pretty good going in the
prevailing circumstances. See Citadel Art Price Index here

Anton Smit
is our cover guy for May's SA Art Times which features SA Sculpture.
Read it here online on the 1 May2013

New
York Post. Hundreds of pages of Andy Warhols dishy
diaries will be unsealed in 2037, sources say, which has
downtown denizens worrying. Andy recorded everything,
a former friend of the artist said, dramatically. And
pages of his unpublished diaries are sealed for 50 years
after his death. They were so explicit  he wanted
to make sure a lot of people werent around!
Published posthumously in 1989, The Andy Warhol Diaries
told saucy tales about everyone from Mick Jagger to John
Lennon,
Source

Paul
McCarthy's Poop Balloon Popped

South
China Morning Post. Art Info.Extreme Weather Pops McCarthy's
Inflatable Poop: Paul McCarthy's 50-foot-tall inflatable
sculpture portraying a pile of excrement, "Complex
Pile," has caused a bit of a mess. The scatalogical
work was on view as part of an exhibition of inflatable
art organized by M+ in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural
District, but things went wrong when a spate of extreme
weather caused it to burst. "A small hole was discovered
on the surface of the piece. We are doing our best to fix
it and hopefully we can inflate the artwork Source

Challenges
of an Artist With a Disability

Huffington
Post.Ted speaker: An artist with a disability shares many
of the same experiences as other artists. We do, however,
struggle with ideas and how to convey them on a canvas.
Having a favourite artist to emulate provides ideas to pursue.
In my case, I like Monet, although many individuals have
indicated that my style resembles The Group of Seven, which
is probably influenced by living here on the West Coast
where I'm surrounded by both the Canadian wilderness and
picturesque waterfront. Source

BUSINESS
ART

China's
new wealth moves art markets

BD
Live. BY Rene Vollgraaf. BEIJING has a 25% slice of the
international pie.China does not only affect South African
commodity prices and fast-food habits, it also has an effect
on the South African art market.The Citadel Art Price Index
out this week showed a 5.3% first-quarter drop. Citadel
investment strategist George Herman thinks it no coincidence
that China's equity market also weakened during the quarter.
"One of the biggest factors affecting art prices across
the world, and also in South Africa, is what happens in
China," Herman said recently. Source

US
court rules in favour of Richard Prince in copyright appeal

A
three-judge panel finds that most of the works in the
artists Canal Zone series, which include
appropriated images of Jamaican Rastafarians by the photographer
Patrick Cariou, are transformativeThe
Art Newspaper. By Julia Halperin. The US Court of Appeals
has largely overturned an earlier ruling in the case between
Patrick Cariou and Richard Prince, a copyright decision
that lawyers say has broad implications for artists who
work with appropriated material. Source

Chagall
Sweeps Stephan Welz & Co. Auction

An
original painting by French/Russian artist Marc Chagall,
one of the 20th century's most successful artists, was
the big seller at the Stephan Welz & Co. Decorative
and Fine Arts Auction in Johannesburg on Tuesday 23 April,
fetching over a million rands more than its estimated
value of R2.2 - R2.5 million. Painted by Chagall in 1948,
Joie de Vivre Paysage de Vence Avec des Fleurs sold for
R3 584 000. Read
more

An original
painting by Marc Chagall fetched over a million rands more than
its estimated value of R2.2 - R2.5 million. Joie de Vivre Paysage
de Vence Avec des Fleurs sold for R3 584 000. Tretchikoff's
Fruit Seller was also a high point, with the painting selling
for R 1 736 000, over half a million rands higher than its estimated
value of R800 000 - R1 200 000.

Born on 30
April. Alborough is a local artist based in Johannesburg. She
studied at the University of Witwatersrand. Currently, she
is a lecturer in New Media and Visual Arts at UNISA and devotes
the rest of her time to her own visual art. Alborough has exhibited
at Scoletta di San Giovanni Battist, Artspace Johannesburg and
7hours HAUS 19. Read
more here:

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